The Tatz line of headphones and earbuds come in 3 different themes: Impressions, Scarz, and Broken Heartz. The memory foam earpads offer supreme comfort while the precision acoustic engineering will optimize your sound and provides great sound isolation as well. The earbuds offer chamber sound. Earphones with great sound and splashes of bright color are always welcomed. Available on iLuv.
Quick heads up that I will be moderating what promises to be a great panel on the future of GPS navigation, starting in a little under an hour here at the Las Vegas Convention Center—3pm, North Hall N260. We’ve got amazing people from TomTom, Garmin, Nokia, TeleNav and SiRF/CSR on the panel, and my guess is that Apple and Google will come up at least once each—every 3 minutes. Here are some more details: [CES]
Directions on Microsoft analysts have made a rather pleasant discovery for the paid version of Microsoft Office Web Apps (browser versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote): you’ll be able to access them from everywhere. Office Web Apps will come included with the purchase of Office 2010 Standard or Office 2010 Professional Plus. The details are in the 128-page Microsoft Product Use Rights (PUR) January 2010 document. Here’s the relevant part:
Office Web Apps. In addition to the rights above, you may install the Web App software on a network device. You may use the Web App software only as described below.
- Primary User. The single primary user of the licensed device may access and use the software remotely from any device.
- Non-primary Users. At any time, one user may access and use the software from the licensed device.
This means that if you have rights to use the paid version of Office Web Apps and you’re away from your main PC, you can still use Office Web Apps from any device hooked up to the Internet without having to purchase additional Office licenses. Additionally, you can let anyone use Office Web Apps on your main PC.
In July 2009, Microsoft released a Tech Preview of the Office Web Apps and confirmed that they would integrate with Microsoft Office 2003 and later, in addition to supporting the following browsers: Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3.5 on Windows, Mac, and Linux, as well as Safari 4 on Mac. Users started to wonder about mobile browsers though, and a month later, Microsoft gave them the green light, but it has yet to specify which ones would be supported specifically.
If you recall, there is also going to be a free, ad-supported consumer version of Office Web Apps available to anyone who uses Windows Live SkyDrive (all you need is a Windows Live ID). Earlier this week, Microsoft unveiled pricing for Office 2010, which is set to arrive, Office Web Apps and all, in June 2010.
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High tech companies and the academic world have a bit of a symbiotic relationship. Many companies follow academic research carefully, and use ideas and developments from university research. The academic community, in turn, often studies the behavior of networks and individuals using data obtained from the commercial world. Both are probably relieved that industry provides a place of employment for the grad students that academia produces. In any case, it looks like Facebook has decided to take the relationship one step further: it’s offering fellowships to students pursuing PhD-level research in computer science.
Although it’s possible for computer science grad students to make it through a degree program without external fellowships, obtaining one provides a degree of flexibility (and, often, better pay). Facebook’s version will come with a $30,000 stipend for nine months, and kick in $5,000 each for travel to meetings and hardware.
The only strings seem to be that the research focus needs to be directly applicable to Facebook. Part of that is obvious from the list of topics: cloud computing, data mining, search algorithms, etc. But the application instructions leave little doubt about the company’s interest in relevant work: applicants are asked for a research summary that “clearly identifies the area of focus and applicability to Facebook.” According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Facebook has only budgeted this for one year, but hasn’t ruled out continuing the program.
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Verizon’s pricing for its next-generation Long Term Evolution Network will likely involve a base subscriber fee plus usage charges for the bandwidth consumed on devices that need a cellular connection, Verizon CTO Dick Lynch told the Washington Post. So the question now is whether the pricing model will resemble that of cable services, with a high base rate and then smaller charges for premium channels, or that of a utility bill, which see users pay a tiny charge each month and then a set rate for each kilowatt consumed. Or will it be closer to that of existing cellular pricing plans, complete with high base rates and punitive overage fees?
Also, how will the subscriber be billed for myriad connected devices? I’ve talked about carriers and consumer device makers looking at personal hotspots such as the MiFi to enable consumers to subscribe to one plan while still providing cellular connectivity for multiple devices. Yet Verizon showed off cameras embedded with LTE, which would seem to require a separate subscription from a consumer.
Whatever Verizon does, the announcement isn’t a surprise given that Lynch said eventually the wireline side of Verizon’s business would moving toward usage-based billing as well. Although at the time he held the cell phone industry up as a model for what usage-based billing for wireline service might look like. Perhaps the LTE plans will be a model for all broadband billing in the future, especially since wireless carriers are desperately trying to move away from flat-rate pricing (GigaOM Pro subscription required) amid a data tsunami.
I like the idea of proving a true metered service for mobile networks (for more on what I view as a true meter, read this), and given how competitive mobile data access could be across multiple cellular providers, Wi-Fi and WiMAX, I think we could actually get reasonable pricing.
Thumbnail image courtesy of Flickr user this lucid moment. In-post image courtesy of Flickr user meddygarnet.
en Tuburcio Gómez 1305 se hara otro mas para sumar a esa cuadra jeje
parece que la empresa mokobockii se va a construir toda esa manzana jaja
Happy Birthday
I hope it’s a fabulous day
:party: :party:
In the wake of the September 11 attacks, we had a post detailing why greater surveillance wouldn’t have helped prevent the attacks. The data was all there, it just wasn’t put together. And yet, in the time since then, the government has, in fact, continually focused on gathering more surveillance (warrantless wiretaps, anyone?), rather than on making better use of the data that is there. Back in 2002, in another post, we discussed how collecting more surveillance data in data retention schemes also made it harder to find the useful data and harder to connect the dots on the data that you had.
With the attempted terror attack on Christmas, it appears that this focus on doing more surveillance rather than better security was a major part in “failing to connect the dots” that allowed the plot to get as far as it did. The EFF points us to a report noting that the reason why Abdulmutallab was allowed on an airplane into the US in the first place — despite widespread warnings, was that there was a backlog in processing all the data:
Abdulmutallab never made it onto a no-fly list because there are simply too many reports of suspicious individuals being submitted on a daily basis, which causes the system to be “clogged” — overloaded — with information having nothing to do with Terrorism. As a result, actually relevant information ends up obscured or ignored.
At what point do people realize that collecting more data doesn’t make us more secure, and actually can do the opposite. As is pointed out at the Salon link above, the idea that you even can sacrifice liberty for security is wrong. The famous saying may say that you “deserve neither,” but increasingly people are realizing that sacrificing liberty doesn’t necessarily get you more security anyway.
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Apple dropped the hammer on a domain squatter the other day, reclaiming sixteen different domain names in one fell swoop. The company filed a complaint a while back against a guy named Daniel Bijan, who didn’t bother to fight his case at all (not that he has one), and the result earlier this week gives them the rights to all of them. They run the gamut from iphonecheap.com to macbookpro.com (how did Apple not own that one?), and as of this writing, we couldn’t find any that were actually being used by Apple yet — they all seem to point to either a blank Apache page or a simple domain placeholder.
And as you may have noticed, there are no secrets here — macfriend.com is probably just a stab in the dark on the part of the domain squatter, and ipodsbaratos.com means “iPods cheap” in Spanish. Just Apple reclaiming some of their rightful web space.
TUAWApple seizes 16 domain names from squatter originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 08 Jan 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: Accessories, Hardware, App Store
Another day at CES 2010, another round of new iPhone, iPod, and Mac-related accessories. We’re putting them all together in one post — it’s like you’re on the show floor, without the terrible AT&T reception.
As you can tell, the iLounge pavilion at the show is packed with all kinds of things that connect to your iPhone — if anyone ever wanted to overpay for an accessory, it’s probably there. We’ll keep an eye on any other Mac-related releases during the show for you throughout the weekend.
TUAWCES Watch: More tales from the iLounge originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Let’s say you want a list of every Fortune 1,000 CEO in the United States, along with a picture and contact information.
You can look through Google. Top page results may help a bit. But to get the granularity you need, top page results can only go so far. What’s the best way to go about discovering and collecting information that is so often scattered and fragmented?
Crowdsourcing works but you need a process and a way to organize the information.
Sponsor
Smartsheet provides a way to use wikis and spreadsheets for crowdsourcing information from services like Mechanical Turk and Live Works.
Smartsheet recently integrated with Google Apps. Clients can work from Google Apps to crowdsource information through Smartsheet.
Let’s say you have a list of the startup companies from the top 10 metro areas in the United States. You have the names of the companies in Google Apps. But you are lacking the name of the CEO and any contact information. So, you add some columns and open the Smartsheet application directly from Google Apps.
You may now make your request to have the work done for you. Smartsheet opens a service such as Mechanical Turk. You describe the job, what you need and set your price. As the tasks are performed, the new information pops into the spreadsheet.
You can then import the spreadsheet back into Google Apps.
Smartsheet integrates with a wiki environment. For example, Smartsheet works with Brain Keeper. Structured information from Smartsheet may be imported into the wiki, providing the crowd-sourced data to anyone with access.
Crowdsourcing is a classic example of how the enterprise can get information almost immediately that could take hours to collect if done manually by one person.
The cost savings alone makes Smartsheet an application worth giving a try.
SmartSheet is a subscription service. Pricing starts at $9.95 per month on a per-user-basis.
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The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA] announced today that the U.S. government has received a Letter of Request from India’s Ministry of Defence (MOD) and the Indian Air Force regarding the potential acquisition of 10 C-17 Globemaster III advanced airlifters.
“Boeing is very pleased that the Indian government has expressed interest in acquiring the C-17 to modernize its airlift capabilities, and we look forward to working closely with them,” said Vivek Lall, vice president and India country head, Boeing Defense, Space & Security.
“We believe the C-17 can fulfill India’s needs for military and humanitarian airlift to help it meet its growing domestic and international responsibilities.”
The C-17 conducted demonstration flights in February at Aero India 2009 in Bangalore, where members of the MOD and Indian Air Force had the opportunity to see the aircraft’s capabilities in action.
The Indian Air Force wants to replace and augment its fleet of Russian-made AN-32 and IL-76 airlifters.
“Nations looking to modernize their airlift capabilities turn to the C-17 because it has the highest reliability and mission-capable rate of any airlift aircraft,” added Tommy Dunehew, Boeing Global Mobility Systems vice president of Business Development.
“It is available right now, without any development risk. Plus, the C-17 is an acquisition success story, with deliveries on or ahead of schedule for the past decade.”
A tactical and strategic airlifter, only the C-17 can carry large combat equipment and troops or humanitarian aid across international distances and deliver them directly to small austere airfields anywhere in the world.
It can land combat-ready troops on semi-prepared runways or airdrop them directly into the fight. The C-17’s ability to back up allows it to operate on narrow taxiways and congested ramps. With a payload of up to 170,000 pounds, the C-17 can take off and land in 3,000 feet or less.
There are currently 212 C-17s in service worldwide, including 19 with international customers. The U.S. Air Force, including active Guard and Reserve units, has 193.
Other customers include the United Kingdom (which recently announced a contract for a seventh airlifter), Qatar, the Canadian Forces, the Royal Australian Air Force, and the 12-member Strategic Airlift Capability initiative of NATO and Partnership for Peace nations.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) Air Force and Air Defence announced Jan. 6 that the UAE has signed a contract for the acquisition of six Boeing C-17s.
About Boeing Defense, Space and Security
A unit of The Boeing Company, Boeing Defense, Space & Security is one of the world’s largest defense, space and security businesses specializing in innovative and capabilities-driven customer solutions, and the world’s largest and most versatile manufacturer of military aircraft.
Headquartered in St. Louis, Boeing Defense, Space & Security is a $32 billion business with 70,000 employees worldwide.
MEDIA CONTACT:Jerry Drelling, 714-318-7594
Boeing Global Mobility Systems
[email protected]
Brian Nelson, +1-321-258-6189
Boeing BDS India Communications
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Here’s another heaping pile of grist for the Apple rumor mill: The company’s Taiwanese manufacturing partners are said to be ramping up production of the touchscreen panels and aluminum chassis intended for the tablet/slate computer Apple (AAPL) is widely expected to uncrate at an as-of-yet unannounced special event Jan. 27. Which means the mysterious device is likely to arrive at market sometime in Q2.
“Production of the cases will begin in February, so everything points to a second-quarter launch right now,” an unnamed source told Reuters. “It doesn’t take that long for the company to assemble the PC together, but a second-quarter shipment date is what we’re looking at now.”
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard such predictions. Last month, Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Yair Reiner said his checks into Apple’s supply chain indicated that “the manufacturing cogs for the [device] were creaking into action” with an eye toward a spring launch.
Additionally, sources this week told The Wall Street Journal that Apple would ship a tablet device to customers in March.
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On a day marked by otherwise disappointing news about the health of the labor market, Alliance Bernsteins Joseph Carson has a strikingly upbeat assessment of the economy in his weekly economic commentary today.
He says the manufacturing sector is in the midst of staging its starkest turnaround in a quarter century.
Mr. Carson tallied up manufacturing shipments from Census Bureau data and changes in manufacturing inventories. The combination of rising shipments and the end of massive inventory cuts means manufacturing output grew at a 20% annualized rate in the fourth quarter, he says. That would be the biggest quarterly increase since 1983, when the U.S. was bouncing back from another deep recession.
He also notes that data from the Institute for Supply Managements monthly survey of supply managers suggests that new order growth is outstripping inventory growth, meaning there are plenty of production gains in the pipeline, he says.
The U.S. economy has plenty of hurdles to jump in order to return to sustainable growth in 2010, he concludes. With bad debts mounting at banks, high unemployment and a record pipeline of mortgage foreclosures, its hardly surprising that most analysts expect a relatively modest economic recovery, echoing the weak rebound that followed the recessions of 1990/91 and 2001. However, we believe the rapid pace of recovery in the manufacturing sector is starting to increase the chances of a speedy recovery.
Former Cub outfielder Andre Dawson was today elected to Baseball’s Hall of Fame.
Dawson appeared on 77.9 percent of the ballots submitted by members of the Baseball Writers Association of America.
Dawson is the 46th former member of the Cubs organization to earn Baseball’s highest honor.
He is scheduled to attend the 25th annual Cubs Convention next week at the Hilton Chicago.
“The Chicago Cubs congratulate Andre Dawson on his long-deserved election to Baseball’s Hall of Fame,” said Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts. “‘The Hawk’ registered six outstanding seasons on the North Side, none finer than his 1987 MVP season when he paced the league with 49 home runs and 137 RBI.
“An eight-time All-Star and Gold Glove Award winner, Andre created countless memories for our fans and, along with fellow Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg, helped bring playoff baseball to Chicago in 1989. We look forward to celebrating Andre’s election with him and our fans when he attends next week’s Cubs Convention.”
“Andre was one of the elite players of my era,” said Sandberg. “Not only was he a terrific player, but his work ethic, his character and the way he played the game of baseball was very deserving of this honor bestowed upon him today.
“On the field, Andre was a five-tool player with one of the best arms in the outfield that I’ve ever seen. His stolen bases combined with his home run totals are certainly Hall of Fame numbers. He represented the teams that he played on with class and always had a team-first attitude.”
A member of the Cubs for six seasons from 1987-92, Dawson batted .285 with 174 home runs and 587 RBI in 867 games with the club. He ranks 11th in team history in home runs and sixth with a .507 slugging percentage (minimum 3,000 plate appearances).
Dawson recorded his lone Most Valuable Player campaign in his first season with Chicago, batting .287 with 49 home runs and 137 RBI, falling only a batting title shy of the Triple Crown. He also led the National League in total bases (353) and ranked third in extra base hits (75) en route to his first of five All-Star appearances with the Cubs (also 1988-91). Dawson also won his first of two Gold Glove Awards with the Cubs in 1987 (and again in 1988). He also won a Silver Slugger Award in 1987.
The remainder of the attendees for the 25th anniversary Cubs Convention will be announced next week.
Scientists are fickle, aren’t they? First they’re saying we can’t have invisibility cloaks, now they’re saying we can. I vote “can,” obviously. How will it work? The same way everything in the future will work: nanoparticles.
A team from Fudan University in Shanghai believes that silver-plated nanoparticles suspended in water could be the trick to draping yourself in invisibility:
In the absence of a magnetic field, such nanoparticles would simply float around in the water, but if a field were introduced, the particles would self-assemble into chains whose lengths depend on the strength of the field, and which can also attract one another to form thicker columns.
The chains and columns would lie along the direction of the magnetic field. If they were oriented vertically in a pool of water, light striking the surface would refract negatively – bent in way that no natural material can manage.
This property could be exploited for invisibility devices, directing light around an object so that it appears as if nothing is there, or be put to use in lenses that could capture finer details than any optical microscope.
See, scientists? That wasn’t so hard! I hope this is lighting a fire under the asses of the USPS owl-training division. [New Scientist via Slashdot]
Filed under: CES, Technology, Ford
Continue reading Video: Mulally summarizes SYNC’s successes, talks about Ford’s future
Video: Mulally summarizes SYNC’s successes, talks about Ford’s future originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Not only does pancreatic and islet transplant face the normal problem of rejection by the body’s reaction to foreign tissue, but it would also be confronted by the persisting autoimmune attack on pancreatic beta cells by the antibodies which caused the diabetes in the first place.
A further problem is that the amount of human pancreatic or islet tissue available for transplant is extremely small. The waiting list for various human organs for transplant is growing much faster the the organs available for transplant, which have remained stagnant since the 1990s, and patients in the U.S. can wait for seven or eight years for a new organ. The shortage would be extremely serious for pancreatic transplants, since while there are only about 400,000 people in need of a new kidney, there would be about 1.5 million people in line for a new pancreas. Islet transplants do little to solve the problem, since it usually requires tissue from two pancreases to harvest enough islets for one patient. Some have estimated that if pancreatic and islet transplants were made available to all type 1 diabetics, the supply of cadaver source organs would suffice to treat only about 1% of those needing a transplant. Animal tissue grafts could never be used to make up the shortfall, since any animal tissue in direct contact with the human immune system would be destroyed in a few hours by the process of hyperacute rejection. When the first kidney transplants were attempted at the University of Strassbourg in 1905, a pig’s kidney was attached to a cut-down vein and artery in the patient’s arm, and it withered away in just a few hours.
Because of unknown causes which have been labeled simply ‘chronic allograft disease,’ transplanted tissue never lasts as long as normal tissue, even apart from problems with rejection by the immune system. Even if a pancreatic or islet transplant is undertaken, it will only function for a few years, and it would be rare for such a graft to last more than a decade. Future transplants would be more likely to be rejected by the immune system, since antibodies to foreign pancreatic tissue would be formed by the first transplant, which would then already be lying in wait to destroy any new tissue of the same organ type.
The transplantation of a new pancreas is difficult since it is surgically extremely difficult to position it in the locus of the natural pancreas. Instead it is positioned elsewhere in the abdomen, and the digestive fluids it produces have to be artifically ciphoned off directly into the bladder, which sometimes results in further metabolic abnormalities. Overall, pancreatic transplant has more complications than the typical kidney, liver, or heart transplant.
Interestingly, pancreatic transplantation is much less helpful in prevening diabetic complications than would be predicted by the predominant theory that blood sugar abnomalities cause the complications of diabetes. In one survey of the results of a large number of pancreatic transplants, the recipients’ retinopathy was found to improve clearly in 8.8% of patients, but it seriously worsened post-transplant in 17.1% Overall, the retinopathy became worse in 46% of all patients following their pancreas transplant, while it stabilized in 54%. In another study no improvement in cardiac disease, no improvement in severe retinopathy, and no improvement in diabetic neuropathy was found after pancreatic transplant.
Sources: A. Koenigsrainer, et al, "Does Pancreas Transplantation Influence the Course of Diabetic Retinopathy?" DIABETOLOGIA, vol. 34, no. 1, p. 586 (1991); J. de Sa, et al, "The Evolution of Diabetic Chronic Complications After Pancreas Transplantation," DIABETOLOGY AND METABOLIC SYNDROME, vol. 1, no. 1, p. 11 (2009).
Sarah Chalke is celebrating the arrival of her first child!
The Scrubs star and her entertainment-lawyer fiancé, Jamie Afifi, welcomed a baby boy named Charlie Rhodes Afifion Christmas Eve, the actress’ rep told PEOPLE.com on Friday.
